Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Complete and unedited email...

Hi Mistress my name is slave X.Hi ave this fantasy from a long time to get a permanent damage in a cbt torture session from a bieutifull goddess like you .My offer is this i live in canada montreal to be more presice my offer is this i can send you a first class airplane tickets plus all your expense pay with hotel food and avery thing you need and i will pay you 10000 in canadian dollars for a 2 hours session of cbt , face kicking ,busting and body and head trample .this is a serious offer if your intresting or if its not enough money lets me no your price is my price tank you for your time slave X.sorry for my english im french and im learning

Wow, this is rather painful to read. But I give him credit where it’s due: his English is better than my French. And I have certainly heard from native English speakers who write just as badly as this.

So I am going to try, for a moment, to assume that his mistakes are in words rather than intent. The fact that he’s trying to negotiate a heavy BDSM scene in a language he doesn’t speak well is a mistake in itself, though. BDSM is a thing you want to be able to negotiate very precisely. That way, you ask NOT to get “permanent damage”.

Also – face kicking? That’s one I hadn’t heard. Unless we’re talking tiny foot-taps, that sounds like a bad idea.

Now let’s talk about that ten thousand dollars. Only we can’t, because it doesn’t exist. This is where my kind assumption that the oddities of this email are language-based break down. Either this man mistakenly tapped in one too many zeros, or – and frankly I think this is more likely – the whole thing is a crazy wanker fantasy.

What makes it crazy? To me, seriously asking for permanent damage = crazy. And also because no sane person is going to pay me five thousand dollars an hour. I’m good, but honey, ain’t nobody that good. Permanent damage? I’d have to kill you, and then raise you from the dead, to warrant that kind of tab.

There is an extremely small chance that the writer of this email, while crazy, does indeed have ten thousand dollars which he’d give me if I got in the room with him and tried to do him permanent damage. But that’s an extremely, extremely small chance indeed.

And you know what? I still wouldn’t do it. Because I don’t deal with crazy people, no matter how much money they offer me. I don't permanently damage people, either.

I get emails like this all the time. Most sex workers do. If you’re a woman who’s new to the industry, take note: If a stranger offers you a unreasonably huge sum of money for what sounds like very little in return, 99.9% of the time, you won’t get it. Chances are you’ll wind up having wasted time and energy chasing it, and sometimes even spent money of your own trying to make the date happen. (“Oh, I’m transferring funds from overseas and they got held up, can you get your own plane ticket and I’ll reimburse you….” Just like the Nigerian scams, only different.)

Note: I am not speaking of getting gifts from someone you know. I have been the fortunate recipient of some incredibly generous gifts from people I had relationships with, and I know other women who have as well. So yes, that happens. But not from a total stranger.

I suppose somewhere in the world, there have been a few Indecent Proposal-type scenarios that were real, but I have never seen one come true. Ever. (And look at all the drama Demi Moore went through with that, anyway.) The writers are either crazy people, or it’s someone deliberately playing games with a carrot on a stick.

It’s a fantasy to have a stranger appear and offer you a large sum of cash. But remember all those children’s stories about magical creatures who offer ordinary people three wishes, or a genie in a bottle? But somehow those wishes, those magic powers, they never turned out like the user wanted, did they? There was always a trick or a sting in them. The lesson of those stories was: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. So beware the modern-day version of trolls under a bridge.